


Under the Circumstances

by bramblePatch



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Light Mind Control, M/M, Psychological Trauma, self mutilation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-19
Updated: 2012-10-19
Packaged: 2017-11-16 15:13:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/540826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bramblePatch/pseuds/bramblePatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Under the circumstances, there's not a lot he can do besides be there for his moirail.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Scream

Your name is Mituna Captor, and something has gone horribly wrong.

You've been sparking a little, the past few nights since it happened, and you don't particularly care who notices; a guy's allowed a little lapse of control under the circumstances. You are so fucking glad of Latula's presence, and a little bit perversely relieved that she can't detect the faint odor of ozone produced by the red-and-blue Jacob's Ladders that periodically climb between your horns. She's been really, really good to have around, and although normally you'd feel terrible for leaning on your matesprit so damn hard for emotional support, under the circumstances...

Under the circumstances...

You've got to stop dancing around the issue. It's not the end of the world, no matter what it might feel like with the tabloids swarming like carrion birds.

Because of course there are tabloids involved. If it'd been you, heh, who would have cared, beyond your admittedly diverse social circle? But when the acknowledged scion of one of the more influential and eccentric purplebloods in the Beforan empire has a meltdown that leaves him hospitalized and a quadrantmate deafened, the scandal-mongers are going to swarm.

(Meenah is of the opinion that you should use Vantas as a living shield the next time a reporter comes poking around, and you are just about to the point of trying it out.)

When you stop in to see Kurloz tonight, he's sitting up in the open-topped medicoon, eating jello through a straw; you loiter in the doorway of his hospital block for a moment, watching the way he repositions the straw in the cup over and over, taking core samples of the brightly-colored gelatin: stab, slurp, stab, slurp. He's looking pretty good, you have to admit to yourself (under the circumstances); they'll probably let him go home in the evening. Really, they would have let him go home sooner; Meulin was discharged as soon as they'd determined there wasn't anything to be done for her ruined hearducts and she wasn't going to start hemorrhaging out of anywhere else, sent home with sympathetic looks and a packet of information about applying for culling. But the doctors had decided to hold Kurloz for observation, after someone tried to cut the stitches and he'd chucklevoodoo'd them within an inch of their sanity.

Then he looks up and sees you, and even through what he's done to himself he grins at you, although it makes him wince a little as the expression pulls at sore flesh. "Hey, asshole," you greet your moirail affectionately as you come over and perch on the lip of the 'coon. 

He leans against you a little, and you let your fingers stray to his tangled mop of curls; the gentle action of finger-combing his hair soothes both of you. Kurloz slings an arm aroung your waist, getting sopor slime on your clothes; you swat at him and try to wipe it off, which mostly results in grinding the green stains further into the yellow fabric. 

Kurloz chuckles, deep and throaty - one of the very few noises you've heard him make since his incident - and almost in spite of yourself you find yourself giggling too. You can feel him at the edges of your mind, chucklevoodoos leaking in around the bases of your horns in a way that would freak you right the hell out from anyone but your moirail. From him, it's ok - he goes brushing past all the little sources of anxiety, soothing rather than letting loose, and you're left with a reassurance that you're dimly aware would probably seem entirely unwarranted if you didn't have Kurloz mucking about in your thinkpan: it's all going to be ok.


	2. Gasp

Your name is Kurloz Makara, and something has gone horribly wrong.

Or possibly terribly right, but under the circumstances you're thinking you'll need a little time to adjust before you can start to think of it in those terms.

He did it, you knew he could, but there's the roiling certainty that it could have been done at much lower cost if those other motherfuckers had listened to him. You're glad you were there, at least, but it hadn't been a situation where Rage held any particular power. Maybe if you'd been able to get Damara to help, or the chatty little spidersis, or even if Kankri could stop obsessing over what was right long enough to get a glimpse at what was true like the Seer he was supposed to be...

Too late to worry about that now. For an agonizing moment there you'd thought it was going to be too late for anything, your session crippled and unwinnable, but Mituna had held off that fate by sheer fucking stubbornness and a fuck-ton of psionic power. 

You are so far beyond proud of him you don't even properly have words for it, although you kind of want to find some representation of the causality that required him to do that to himself and punch it in the face.

Mituna's slept a lot since he saved you all. He's asleep now, curled up next to you while you try to decipher something about a puzzle the game has thrown at you. You hope that his fatigue isn't going to be a long-term thing, although when he's awake he's shaky and a little confused, and you have to be careful to keep your 'voodoos to yourself because the slightest mental touch and he draws back like you were poking a bruise. So far as you can tell, he hasn't a hint of telekinesis left, although he says the voices are worse than ever.

Sometimes, he says, he thinks he can hear gods. You bristle at this a little, not sure what to make of the claim but thinking he might mean your Messiahs; you're not sure whether you're jealous over your gods or your moirail. But no, you figure out later, it's Horrorterrors' doomed whispers he hears.

He's stirring now, pushing himself up to look at you with an expression that mixes confusion and relief in a way that they really should not be mixed. You help him to sit up, and he abruptly flops over to cling around your midsection. "Hey. Hey Kurlot'th," he says, tripping over your name as he falls prey to a speech impediment you haven't heard since you two were wigglers. "It'th gonna be ok, ok?"

Your throat tightens; even if speaking was a thing that you did, you wouldn't be able to. So you nod, and run a palm over one set of twinned horns. Everything's going to be ok. You'll make sure of it, if it's the last thing anybody ever does.


End file.
